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From: Han Monsees <monsees@phys.uu.nl>
Subject: Money in sports (was: Re: NASCARS : what's the thrill ? I dont get
 it)
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Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 15:47:57 GMT
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I think we should drop the NASCAR-discussion because we'll never agree,
but I thibk it's interesting start a more fundamental one:
> 
> > In the fourth place, those NASCAR-cars are like rolling bill-boards. The
> > GT1 or BTCC cars in Europe look much more tastefull.    
> 
> "tasteful" means that it is a matter of taste.  I kind of like the crazy,
> toy-car quality of Nascars.  And since corporate money is what makes the
> series survive, I am not going to take that away from them.

I think that the corporate money has killed racing (and sports in general)
because the amount of money that is going around is so huge that only the
top teams, who have those amounts of money, are able to run at the top. It
is for newcomers virtually impossible to start in the top-series an to
become succesful.

Let me give some examples (of course from F1 (-:)

In the seventies, anyone who liked it could build a chassis, buy a motor
(Cosworth!) and a gearbox and be succesfull in F1. Teams like Wolf,
Hesketh, Williams, Tyrrell etc proved that money wasn't the most
important those days.

Nowadays, the topteams spend such amounts of money that it took Jordan 7
jears to win it's first GP. Teams such as Stewart, Sauber, Lola, Forti did
never reach real competativity.

The result is that in the 70s and 80s, the F1 grid counted some 40 cars in
some seasons of which 20 had a good chance of beingn the podium.
Nowadays, only 22 cars take part in F1 and only 6 or 7 have recently
visited the podium.

I think that F1 has lost a great deal of it's attractivity due to the
increasing amounts of money that have to be spend in order to be
successful. I think this is true for other series, too.
And for other sports (10 jears ago, KV Mechelen was able to win an
European cup, which will be impossible now.)

Han

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Q. Who did the Germans blame for not winning the World Cup?
A. Anyone but themselves.

			--- BBC's they think it's all over ---
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